Once he tried to tell his mother of his engagement. She had been speaking to him of Blanche, talking as if everything were settled, and asking why it were not as well to announce the engagement at once.
"Because," Neil said to her, "I am not engaged to Blanche, and do not know that I ever shall be. To tell you the truth, mother, I love my Cousin Bessie better than any woman living, and if I had money of my own I would marry her to-morrow."
This was a great deal for Neil to say, knowing his mother as he did, and possibly he might not have said it could he have foreseen the storm which followed his declaration. What she had once before said to him upon the subject was nothing when compared with her present anger and scorn, as she assured him again and again that if he married Bessie McPherson, she would at once cut off his allowance and leave him to shirk for himself. That was the way she expressed it, for she could be very coarse in her language at times, even if she were a titled lady. Bessie should never enter her house as her daughter-in-law, she said, and she would not only cut off Neil's allowance during her life, but at her death would leave what little money she had to some one else—Jack Trevellian, perhaps, who would represent the family far better than her scapegrace son, with his low McPherson tastes.
After this Neil could not tell her. On the contrary, he bent every energy to keep the secret from her, and never again mentioned Bessie or Stoneleigh in her presence, but devoted himself to Blanche in a friendly, brotherly kind of way, which kept the peace in that quarter and left him in quiet. But his thoughts were busy with plans for the future, when Bessie would be his wife and he disinherited, for her sake. Once he calculated the possibility of living at Stoneleigh on the meagre annuity which he knew Archie received, and which would die with him. But he could not do that, and he called himself a sneak for considering the matter an instant.
"If there was something I could do which would not compromise me," he thought. "I might become an inventor, or an author. I could do better at that, for I have some talent for yarning, they say. Wilkie Collins and George Eliot make heaps of money with their pens. Yes, I believe I'll try it."
And so Neil shut himself in his room for some hours each day, and commenced the story which was to make his fortune. But as Bessie sat for his heroine and Grey Jerrold for his hero, he became furiously jealous when he reached the love passages, and tearing up his manuscript in disgust, abandoned the field of authorship forever.
Suddenly his thoughts turned to the old aunt in America, whom, his fancy painted as fabulously rich. She could help him, and perhaps if he wrote her the right kind of a letter she would. And so he set himself to the task, which proved harder, even, than the story-writing had been. Neil knew his Aunt Betsey was very eccentric, and he hardly knew how to make her under stand him without saying too much and so ruining his cause.
"By Jove, I'll tell her the truth, that I want money in order to marry Bessie," he said, and he took Bessie for his starting paint, and waxed eloquent as he described her sweetness and beauty, and told of her life of toil and care and self-denial at Stoneleigh, with her father, whom he represented as just on the verge of the grave. Then he told of his engagement and his mother's fierce opposition to it, and the sure poverty which awaited him if he remained true to his cousin, as he meant to do, and then he came to the real object of his letter, and asked for money on which to live until his mother was reconciled, as she was sure to be in time, when she knew how lovely and good Bessie was. A few thousand pounds would suffice, he said, as he knew his father would allow him to occupy a house in Warwick Crescent which belonged to him and which would save his rent. And then, growing bolder as he advanced, he hinted at the possibility that his aunt might be intending to make Bessie her heir, and said if it were so he should be glad to know it, and would keep the secret religiously from Bessie until such time as he might reveal it. A speedy answer to this letter was desired, and Neil closed by signing himself:
"Your very affectionate nephew, Neil McPherson."
He posted the letter himself, and feeling almost sure of a favorable response, went and bought Bessie a small solitaire ring, such as he could afford, and sent it with the most loving, hopeful letter he had yet written to her.